Structure Of Modern Family Makes U.s. Workplace Obsolete

January 27, 1986|By Joan Beck, Chicago Tribune

Has the American workplace failed to keep up with the times? Has the American work force changed so much in recent years that major adjustments are essential in the way work traditionally has been done?

A new study by a prestigious panel of management, labor and academic leaders has charged that the failure of industry and government to recognize and adjust to the current realities of the American family has created conflicts for workers and sapped national productivity.

The report called for major changes in business policies and government services.

The American workplace still is structured as if most workers were men with a wives who stay home to look after house and children, the study notes. The reality is that fewer than 10 percent of families now fit this model. A majority of women hold paying jobs, including half of those with children younger than 3 and 70 percent with school-age youngsters.

As a result, parents face wearying pressures on their time. Children may not get adequate care. Family life may deteriorate. The conflicts, guilts, fatigue and problems that result can spill over into the workplace and become the legitimate concern of employers.

But employers have been slow to adjust working conditions to the new work force, the study points out. Instead, they have expected the millions of new women workers to conform to traditional male work patterns, regardless of childbearing exigencies. Business, generally, reaps the benefits of a huge increase in intelligent, productive employees while children and family life bear the brunt of this sweeping social change.

The new study makes several recommendations, too many of them looking to government for solutions, rather than to the private sector. (It was made by the Family Policy Panel of the Economic Policy Council and funded by the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations. Panel members included six national labor union heads, eight current or former corporation executives, academic leaders and former President Gerald Ford.)

Most industralized nations have much more extensive pro-family policies and support systems than the United States. This makes it easier for women to work and tends to boost their earnings, the study notes.

The study calls for a major expansion of quality child care provided by government and by industry and an increase in the income tax credit for child care. It urges upgrading maternal and child health services through Medicaid or private health insurance. It advocates a partly paid maternity leave of six to eight weeks and unpaid paternal and maternal leave for newborn care, all with a guaranteed return to the same job. And the study pushes for more flexible work schedules.

Fortunately, the federal government isn't likely to jump into child care in a big way in the face of current demands to trim the deficit. Large-scale child care is enormously expensive and inevitably would mean higher taxes and a deficit increase. It represents another intrusion of government into family life. And it lessens parents' chances of making personal decisions for their own children.

Those who oppose further drift toward Sweden-type national solutions to the problems of the new work force can be relieved that budget constraints almost certainly preclude it for now. But that leaves employers and the private sector to deal with the changing needs of the new work force -- as should be. The nation still needs to develop a consensus about who should care for young children during the workweek -- and ways to free those who prefer other answers from the tyranny of such a consensus. The issue is as immediate as an emergency phone call at work about a sick baby and as far-reaching as the size, health and competency of future generations.

The Family Policy Panel's biggest contribution may well be its clear analysis of the issue: The workplace needs to change because the work force has changed and so has the American family.